Dean's favourite albums #13 - Mermaid Avenue - Billy Bragg and Wilco

This is another album that I would not have forecast to make it this high on the list, but after making my list and checking it twice, I decided its spot is well deserved. A bit of background, the daughter of folk singer Woody Guthrie asked Billy Bragg to take some of Woody’s unheard lyrics and put them to music. Bragg accepted the challenged and roped in Wilco to assist him. The results were “Mermaid Avenue”, and a subsequent follow up “Mermaid Avenue Vol 2”.

 

It took me a bit of time to get into this album. Some tracks, the standouts in my opinion immediately stood out like “Walt Whitman’s Niece” (see link) and “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key”, but the remainder of the album took a little while to unravel.  Eventually though, they started to work their way into me, and now I can say that the whole album is great with the catchy tracks like “Hoodoo Voodoo”, “She Came Along to Me” and “I Guess I Planted” stacking up nicely with the slower ones like “Ingrid Bergman”, and “At My Window Sad and Lonely”

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhe9tVARzCk

 

At #12 – we crank up the volume for a brilliant Aussie debut rock and roll album